Wednesday, September 19, 2007

powerpoint

So after thinking about this powerpoint project a lot, I have gotten rather stuck. I know we will be doing stuff in class tomorrow, however, I feel a little uneasy about doing a powerpoint presentation for a math class. I am unsure of the specific content area I want to cover and how to actually tie into a class so that it isn't just straight notes on the powerpoint. At this point, I feel that if I was to just do a presentation for notes, I would rather do it on a whiteboard or chalkboard. I like to add things in as a I teach, as well as having the flexibility to change or add as the class goes on, especially when students want more examples.

I can see the benefits of doing some things with powerpoint, especially when lecturing to a large number of people, but for a small classroom, one that is trying to be more interactive, I have my doubts. I know that powerpoint can be a great asset to an English classroom or maybe even a Spanish classroom, but I have trouble seeing it for a math classroom. I could just not be seeing the creativity, which is quite possible, but I hope to be able to change my mind about powerpoint as we continue with these projects.

1 comment:

I can see where you are coming from. But you could use PowerPoint to compose different kinds of lessons in a math classroom. For example, you could give a presentation on a mathematician whose theory you are studying. Or you could give a presentation on how certain math concepts are used in the workplace and other "real world" applications. It may be hard to teach the actual computations in PowerPoint but I think there are other ways to include it in the math cirriculum.